What did 2019 mean in terms of Karabakh conflict?
By Abdul Kerimkhanov
The year 2019 represented another missed opportunity for Baku and Yerevan in terms of reaching an agreement over Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s breakaway region that came under Armenian occupation in early 1990s.
As in previous years, despite mediation efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, there was no progress in the conflict resolution largely due to Armenia’s unconstructive stance.
Yerevan’s belligerent rhetoric
In 2019, the Armenian authorities stepped up belligerent rhetoric that undermined peace and the negotiations process, increasing mistrust among the two nations.
On March 29, Armenian Defense Minister David Tonoyan threatened that Armenian would occupy more Azerbaijani lands in case of the resumption of war between the two countries. "As the minister of defense, I declare that the formula territories for peace will no longer exist, and we will reformulate it as ‘new war - new territories," Tonoyan said in address to the Armenian Diaspora in New York.
Tonoyan’s statement must be understood in the context of Armenia’s policy of aggression and its ambitions to expand its territories at the expense of its neighbors, in particular of Azerbaijan.
The country’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also disappointed the international community with his extremely hostile and dangerous statements about the future of Nagorno-Karabakh.
On August 5, Pashinyan called for the reunification of Armenia with occupied Azerbaijani territories. Addressing a crowd in Azerbaijan’s occupied Khankandi city, Pashinyan led the crowd in chants of “unification”, shouting: “Karabakh is Armenia. Period!”
The chants of unification and the nationalist slogans voiced during the rally were reminiscent of those in the 1980s when Armenia was demanding cessation of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. These dangerous statement have a vast potential to flare-up the situation on the line of contact.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev responded to Pashinyan’s statement on October 3, by stating that “Karabakh is Azerbaijan and exclamation mark". Aliyev made his statement during the plenary session of the XVI meeting of the “Valdai” International Discussion Club held in Sochi.
Aliyev responded to Armenia’s territorial claim against Azerbaijan yet another time on October 15. Addressing the 7th Summit of the Cooperation Council of the Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council) in Baku, Aliyev spoke about Zangazur region that was part of Azerbaijan but given to Armenia by the Soviet authorities in 1920.
Taking Zangazur from the rest of Azerbaijan and its adding to Armenia divided the great Turkic world geographically, Aliyev stated.
Lavrov reaction
Pashinyan’s statement about reunification received backlash from the international community.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on December 3 that Pashinyan’s statement that Karbakh is Armenia was similar to the statement “by Prime Minister of Albania from Tirana [who] stated that Kosovo is Albania”, adding that “these statements do not help the settlement of the conflict".
Lavrov expressed support for contacts between the communities of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“Any decision must be made by people who live on this land. I support resumption of contacts between the communities. As a result, the whole Karabakh population will have to decide how they will live,” Lavrov said.
Pashinyan also sought but failed to change the format of the conflict resolution, claiming that Nagorno-Karabakh must be a party to the conflict along with Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Karabakh’s Azerbaijani Community
Another change in 2019 was the increased role of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh Community in the negotiations process with the appointment of the new community head, Tural Ganjaliyev.
Ganjaliyev met with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Slovakian Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák in Baku on March 5 where he stated that “both communities of Nagorno-Karabakh of Azerbaijan can coexist peacefully within internationally recognized borders, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan." He also made a number of foreign trips to the U.S., Turkey, Poland and attended a number of official and international meetings in his capacity of the head of the community of 80,000 people.
Official meetings
Azerbaijan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmar Mammadyarov and Armenia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Zohrab Mnatsakanyan held four meetings under auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group in 2019 to exchange views around the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The first meeting was held a meeting in Vienna on March 28 with the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs.
Another meeting between Mnatsakanyan and Mammadyarov was hosted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on April 15 and attended by the Russian, French, and U.S. co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Minsk Group.
FMs agreed to press ahead with efforts to end the conflict over Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, but no major progress was evident after the meeting in Moscow.
On September 23, Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanyan, met in New York to discuss and define the current situation on the talks over settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The parties outlined necessary steps in this direction including the visit of the co-chairs to the region and the conducting of a regular meeting of the foreign ministers in the near future.
Yet another meeting between Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanyan was held in Bratislava, Slovakia on December 4.
Aliyev-Pashinyan meeting
The leaders of the two countries, however, had only one meeting under the auspices of the Minsk Group, on March 29 in Vienna.
Later in an interview with RIA Novosti, Ilham Aliyev said that the meeting was held in a positive and constructive atmosphere and enabled the parties to clarify their positions.
Fascism in Armenia
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also confronted Nikol Pashinyan’s over Armenia’s track record of glorification of Nazism.
During the Summit of the heads of the CIS member states on October 11, Aliyev spoke about the glorification of Armenian Garegin Ter-Harutyunyan known as Garegin Nzhdeh, who collaborated with the Third Reich and was involved in Holocaust, based on documented evidence. He also notoriously said that “he who dies for Germany dies for Armenia". The Armenian authorities have built a monument to Nzhdeh in central Yerevan and to this date, there is a street and metro station after his name as well as a tombstone.
Civilian casualties
Azerbaijani civilians continued to come under shelling attack by Armenians throughout the year.
On October 2, Azerbaijani civilian named Safarali Abyshov was killed in Gazakh region as a result of the targeted fire opened by Armenian armed forces.
Military strength
The Azerbaijani Armed Forces conducted over 70 operational-tactical and command post exercises in 2019.
According to theGlobal Firepower report for 2019, Azerbaijan ranks 52nd for its military strength and Armenia was in the 96th place in the same report.
Azerbaijan has a military budget of $1.6 billion while Armenia’s military budget was $520 million in 2019.
UN resolution on Karabakh
In 2019, Baku further strengthened its position among international organizations. Thus, the UN General Assembly approved antoher resolution reaffirming that the Nagorno-Karabakh region is Azerbaijan’s territory. The relevant Report of the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations was confirmed at the plenary meeting on December 18.
Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan’s breakaway region which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.
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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94
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